Sunday, November 03, 2013

Monday, June 10, 2013

The sky pulsed and quivered
as I stood looking up
into the bosom of Aurora Borealis --
dancing without inhibition
or desire for an audience
but simply for the joy of being
of illuminating
of showing
of shining
and I ached
to partake
in the fullness of experience
that proclaims an absence
of artifice
and then, succumbing
my thoughts raced for another
to validate the experience of me
while the seething lights shamed
and continued their admonishment
to blend, to go blank, and to be.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Wedded Rocks (Meoto Iwa), just off-shore, close to Ise Shinto (The Holy City or Capital of the Kami) shrine in Mie Prefecture, Japan. These are the “Husband and Wife Rocks,” a Shinto shrine representing the union of creator kami (deities) Izanagi and Izanami, and thereby celebrate the sanctity of marriage between man and woman.The larger rock is said to be the male rock, and has a small torii, or sacred purifying entrance, at the top. It is known as Oiwa. The male rock measures 9 meters tall and 40 meters around; the female rock is 3.6 meters high and 9 meters around. The female rock is known as Meiwa.

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Welcome to "When I Wax"-- a place to escape the pedants and wax poetic, or even wax artistic.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell was asked by an interviewer how a regular person could preserve his sense of the mythic when so many feel too besieged by the claims of every day living. He said, "You must have a place to which you can go, in your heart, in your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not know what you owe anyone or what anyone owes you. You must have a place you can go to where you do not know what your work is or who you work for, where you do not know who you are married to or who your children are."

When I Wax is such a place for me. Blogging drafts of poetry and other sundries is like practice fly-casting on the front lawn... it may look silly, but it's effective...

Thank you

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
George Gordon ByronThe Destruction of Sennacherib